DAVID KLAMEN ARTIST

There was a time when David Klamen figured his work would grace medical textbooks.

Instead, his highly prized creations are hanging in the homes of knowledgeable art collectors on two continents, as well as in such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which purchased two of his pieces.

Mr. Klamen, 33, is one hot paint-slapper. He's the first artist the prestigious Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago has taken on in almost 10 years, and the youngest. And there's a sizable waiting list of others eager to buy his large, brooding modernist paintings, which routinely fetch up to $18,000 and are considered by many experts to be underpriced.

"He's a painter who is extremely proficient, but doesn't let that get in the way of his feelings," says gallery director Paul Gray.

The Dixon native was an uncomfortably shy high school misfit who initially considered a career illustrating medical journals, but as he pursued a degree in biochemical communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Mr. Klamen became stultifyingly bored.

"The magic of realism began to disappear," he says with a laugh.

He plunged into creative art classes at the U of I, and later the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, developing a talent for abstract art and discovering the joys of self-expression.

"It was like somebody holding a mirror up to me for the first time," says Mr. Klamen, now a tenured art professor for Indiana University in Gary.

These days, he's working Monday through Saturday in a Pilsen studio with blacked-out windows. His current style-influenced by the darkness of unrestored Renaissance art-requires close and intense study. He paints a technically realistic scene-an architectural interior, perhaps-then darkens the image with coat after coat of varnish, like an old Rembrandt or Caravaggio.

Marvels friend and fellow artist Lela Hersh, manager of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art: "He appeals to scholars, museum curators and Joe Blow down the street."